Golf world's capital? Palm Beach County area has a strong case

First, before the PGA of America had even targeted Palm Beach County for its headquarters in 1965, Jack Nicklaus made his home here. Now Tiger Woods is in the neighborhood, too, relocating from Orlando last fall to a custom-built estate on Jupiter Island and signing up to play in this week's Honda Classic for the first time.

Seems like that ought to be enough to identify our area as the galaxy's most concentrated community of star golfers, but there is so much more to offer in the competition with Orlando's bustling tour pro population and the slightly smaller lists from Phoenix and Dallas-Fort Worth.

Greg Norman, Gary Player and Nick Price put down their roots years ago on the north end, just across the Martin County line. Bernhard Langer is situated down south, in Boca Raton. All are members of the World Golf Hall of Fame.

Mix in the long list of PGA Tour regulars who, like Tiger, will commute from their area homes to play in this week's Honda Classic and it's not enough to call this a boom market for the game's greatest names. Kaboom is more like it.

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There are at least 61 current or former touring pros with homes in our area, pending reports of new arrivals and leaving out, for the moment, winter renters like Rory McIlroy. That makes it a virtual dead heat with the Orlando metropolitan area, which according to figures compiled by the Orlando Sentinel boasts a total of 60 PGA Tour and Champions Tour names.

Orlando has more from the regular tour, with 38 players to our 32, but Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast win the senior battle, with 29 current or retired players to Orlando's 22.

These are raw numbers alone, of course. Nobody matches our area for star power, and nowhere else can match the momentum of Jupiter and all the other communities within the Honda Classic's target zone.

"I've always said that I have three different places," said 2010 Honda champion Camilo Villegas, who keeps jet skis at the dock of his Loxahatchee River home and also enjoys bicycling along the beach on SR A1A. "One is Colombia, which is more family and friends, a little more social. Jupiter is the place where I just kind of work and get ready for golf tournaments. And I've got the PGA Tour, which is the zoo."

If that last part is true, then Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast have much to feed the needs of all those long-driving animals. The weather is great. The ocean is close. Major airports and private jet centers are in abundance. So are high-quality, low-traffic golf courses and practice facilities like The Bear's Club in Jupiter, home course for the Nicklaus family, and the Medalist in Hobe Sound, founded by Norman.

Until the last few years, however, Orlando's magnetic appeal seemed slightly stronger. It took a little word-of-mouth advertising to accelerate the exodus, and the promise that celebrities are so commonplace in certain uncluttered South Florida zip codes that there is less fuss over them.

"Me and my wife, we never really got the Orlando thing," said Mark Calcavecchia, who grew up in North Palm Beach and is here to stay with a riverfront Tequesta home of his own. "You've got your Lake Nona Club and your Isleworth, which is a beautiful place, but once you drive out of the gate, you're right in Disney World traffic.

"It's definitely quieter here. We've got a ton of great restaurants and we don't deal with traffic jams on I-4 ... I remember talking to Tiger years ago, saying, 'Hey, you need to move down to Jupiter. It's awesome down there. You can have your yacht down there.' He said, 'Yeah, yeah, I've been looking at it.' "

Eventually, just about everybody does.

"One of the things that I really like about this area is how friendly everyone is," Woods said. "People are really nice, and you're not treated like you're special, which is great. When I'm out on the boat or in town with [my children] Sam and Charlie, everyone says hi. We're very happy here."

Lasting relationships already are forming, like the Tiger Woods Foundation's establishment of a science-based learning center for Martin County students. It's modeled after a flagship educational program that Tiger started in Anaheim, Calif., in 2006.

"We opened a Learning Center campus in Stuart at Murray Middle School and it's going great," Woods said. "I took a forensic science class with the kids and their excitement to learn is amazing. We want to get kids in college and later into a career they really like."

FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD

Now we come to golf's international stars, who increasingly follow the leadership of their globe-trotting peers when it comes to nesting in this area.

Price, for instance, came over from South Africa in the 1980s looking for a U.S. base from which to drive his PGA Tour career. Anywhere in Florida, with its lack of state income tax, must have looked pretty good at the time.

"It was between here and Jacksonville," said Price, the winner of three majors, "but the winters can get harsh up there. Greg (Norman) and I were really good friends so (my family) came down here and stayed with them and we really liked the area so that was an easy move for us.

"Where I live in Hobe Sound is still old Florida, but I have the opportunity to come down to Palm Beach and enjoy the glitz and the glamour and come to some of the functions. I love to fish, and if you're an outdoors person, I think this part of Florida is the bull's-eye."

So the Great White Shark turned Price on to the Jupiter area. Who or what brought Norman here?

"Well, I grew up on the beach in Australia and I wanted to get to the beach here," Norman said. "I was in Orlando at the time and Orlando to me was very claustrophobic. I gravitated down to this part of the world A), for the education system for my kids, and B) for living on the ocean. It was just a lifestyle move.

"Jack Nicklaus was very instrumental. His wife Barbara enrolled my kids in the Benjamin School before we even thought about coming down here because she knew somewhere down the line you would have to think about an education for your kids ... I spoke to Jack and Barbara a lot about it. They said, 'If you come down here, people are pretty low-key in this part of the world.' "

By pooling so many great athletes in one spot, the notion of bumping into, say, world No. 1 player Luke Donald, at a restaurant or a gas pump is far more normal and casual than it would be for him back home in England.

"I'm British, I consider myself British, but I'm making my life in the U.S.," said Donald, who is based at the Bear's Club. "I went to college at Northwestern and Chicago is home for most of the year, but I'm here from the beginning of the year until the end of April. We're very comfortable with the lifestyle."

So is Ernie Els, who moved to Jupiter shortly after winning the 2008 Honda Classic. He operated out of Orlando in the 1990s and London after that.

Two of Ernie's South African countrymen, Charl Schwartzel and Louis Oosthuizen, rented property at Old Palm in Palm Beach Gardens last year and both, say their representatives, may buy in the area soon. Schwartzel is the defending Masters champion, and Oosthuizen won the British Open in 2010, so any announcement concerning their choice of residence is necessarily major.

Northern Ireland's McIlroy, golf's latest sensation at 22, won the U.S. Open by eight strokes last June. By summer's end he was talking about moving to Palm Beach County. While he evaluates future purchases, McIlroy reportedly is renting a place along the Loxahatchee.

THE NEW TREND IS MOVING DOWN HERE

Sooner or later, all that talk will lead to action, just as it was when Keegan Bradley, the reigning PGA champion, started listening to friends who live in Jupiter.

"The new trend is for everybody to move to Jupiter," said Bradley, who has done just that. "I think the secret's kind of out. I mostly play at the Bear's Club, but if you show up anywhere, you're going to have a bunch of guys to go play with. It's a good deal."

Dustin Johnson moved to Jupiter last year from his long-time home in Myrtle Beach, S.C. Ocean fishing and wake-boarding are always on his mind here, and according to Calcavecchia, "Dustin has got some kind of wicked boat."

Rickie Fowler, the guy with the electric orange outfits and various other shades of wow, is another recently established Jupiter resident. He practices at the Medalist, where last October Woods showed how comfortable he was as a new member by shooting a course-record score of 62.

"Yeah, I've been around with him a little bit," Fowler said. "He's been a good addition to the club up there. I think he likes it a lot."

Woods has what he calls "an outstanding practice facility at home" on Jupiter Island, but there's not sufficient room to hit everything in the bag.

"Medalist is a good, tough test of golf," Woods said. "The staff and members are great and it's fun having other Tour players there. We talk about golf, equipment and we can play together if we want to."

For years some of the biggest names in women's golf have made Palm Beach County their home, too, highlighted by LPGA Hall of Famers JoAnne Carner, Karrie Webb and Beth Daniel. The next generation of stars is following suit, with Stacy Lewis moving to Palm Beach Gardens in recent months and Michelle Wie to Jupiter.

Morgan Pressel, 23, grew up in Boca Raton and isn't going anywhere. She won an LPGA major, the Kraft Nabisco Championship, at the age of 18.

"It's so nice down here," Pressel said. "It's cooler than Orlando in the summer and warmer in the winter and we've got the ocean ... I know a lot of people live in Orlando and a lot of their coaches are there. Well, my coach is in Orlando, too, but I love it down here and I'm very happy to be a local."

Ken Kennerly, executive director of the Honda Classic, depends on local knowledge in building one of the best tournament fields of the season.

"Orlando for many years was the hotspot," Kennerly said. "No. 1, that's where Arnold Palmer went. No. 2, back then everybody was flying commercial and you can fly from Orlando International to anywhere in the world. What a lot of players started to figure out, though, particularly the successful ones, is that you can fly privately from right here and lots of nearby places.

"It does help our tournament, the way all that travel takes a toll on you, for players to know that they are able to sleep in their own bed one week out of the year on tour. That's pretty neat."

Dozens of top players stay here long after their touring days have ended. The PGA of America's busy club pro tournament schedule brings winter visitors who eventually become full-timers, too.

"Between the South Florida PGA and the PGA of America, we'll have over 70 events during the year that local pros and national professionals can play," said Joe Steranka, CEO at the PGA of America's headquarters on the grounds of PGA National. "We have over 1,000 golf professionals who have bought homes from Palm Beach Gardens all the way up to Port St. Lucie."

NICKLAUS LED THE WAY

In a way, all are following the Bear's tracks.

If Nicklaus had settled in, say, Naples or St. Augustine or Panama City instead of North Palm Beach, this proliferation of power golfers and top-drawer golf facilities might have happened somewhere else in Florida.

Originally, Jack said, "my dad and I bought a house down on the south side of Fort Lauderdale, which was all right for fishing. But there weren't that many fish down there, and I was 45 minutes from the nearest golf course without traffic. So I said, 'This doesn't work.'"

An invitation to play in a pro-am at the new Lost Tree Village Club in 1963 turned the tide. Jack and Barbara bought a small home there and then, in 1970, they built a larger house nearby, on the water, with boat docks and a pool and a tennis court. This works, Nicklaus figured, and it still does.

Just check all the local names in the Honda Classic field, a list that will be longer next year, and can be expected to grow and grow, until somebody comes up with a different definition for a pro golfer's paradise.